Certain People On Quizzes

[bobbie22]

I often watch quizzes, and some people say, when asked " this is not my area of knowledge", when previously in the quiz they have not answered any questions correctly with the same reply. Does this mean that the have no area of knowledge? So why do they go on quizzes? Just having a moan.

[jim360]

Ta, minty :)

[murraymints]

tis true..jim is a real academic ,and not an amateur of which we have many here !

[pastafreak]

I suspect pp also has a huge and varied amount of knowledge stashed away...both academic and absorbed via everyday reading and experience.

[Cloverjo]

I watched Tipping Point today -I know it's a rubbish quiz. A youngish lad was asked: which iconic singer was married to Lisa Marie Presley from 1994 to 1996?
His reply was Elvis Presley.

[Peter Pedant]

Jiim has a brain the size of Jupiter !
Hi Jim ! I still laugh over Khandro asking you if you could add .....
problem is - they dont have much math on uni challenge
and anyway I think you are too old ....

got the atomic particle q last night completely wrong ....
sorry sub-atomic particle
and didnt know that Felis sylvestris was a scottish slithery cat .....

and MM you're right ! I cdnt be an academic - I am not small-minded enough ! ter-daaah Jim will know exactly what I mean .....

[Hypognosis]

@gingejbee

//Then there's the " that was before I was born" get-out....
15:08 Tue 05th Apr 2016//

I hate that. Perhaps it was because the back-catalogue wasn't as vast as it now is that, in our youth, we had had every record post "Rock Around The Clock" given airplay often enough for us to have it as a common point of reference, never mind matters of taste.

Somebody, somewhere, decided, in the 80s/90s (?), that old war films weren't helping international wounds to heal and 1930s/40s/50s films only reinforced cultural attitudes also in need of suppression. Never mind the historical insights or the quality of acting/lighting/setting/story-telling etc. So, I supect, young persons today do not draw on the same set of reference points some of us still share.

This makes for amusing viewing, with quizzes: the amount of things people simply don't know. The miserablist in me sometimes wonders if this is why they are always so infernally happy in their lives. Like they say; "ignorance is bliss".

[Caribeing]

Agree, I wasn't born when Hitler was in power but I know things about him, to go on Quiz Shows you need a wide range of general knowledge and not specific knowledge. Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway last Saturday from the Cruise ship, contestant picked from the cruisers to win the Ads was asked what is the highest rank in the Navy, Admiral or Commodore, he answered Commodore, bet he wished he stayed in his cabin after that!

[jim360]

There's also the "I know it but for whatever reason it's not coming to me" moment; or the "I could have a sensible guess but I'm too frightened of being wrong to risk it"; or the "I thought you were going to ask something else and am too stuck thinking about the answer to that one rather than to the question you actually asked"; or "I'm still thinking about the last one I got wrong", etc.

Or, there was one time I was asked a fairly basic physics question, and the relevant formula came to me immediately. But, just my bad luck, I remembered it with a different use of symbols from the one I usually used, and couldn't untangle what had gone wrong in my head. I remember knowing that the other guesses were wildly wrong all the same -- just not what the right answer was.

Of course, some people are genuinely unaware of things that should be pretty standard knowledge, but unless you take quizzes seriously (in my opinion, too seriously), we all have gaps in our knowledge. Sometimes you are just unlucky that what you don't know is exposed more vividly than what you do.

[-Talbot-]

Why do ABers constantly get annoyed at people on quiz shows?

[Jackdaw33]

My favourite get out is, "Oh it's on the tip of my tongue".

[Hypognosis]

There's a comedy sketch, possibly featuring Michael Palin but not necessarily Python where, after 3 very esoteric/universal truths/Oxbridge style questions, the big prize hangs on whether the contestant knows who scored the winner in the 1923 cup final.

That's why some people condescendingly differentiate between trivia quizzes and 'highbrow' quizzes.

It made me laugh, anyway. Intellectual snobbery is always funny. :)

[Samuraisan]

It annoys men when they haven't a clue and say they are going to take an " educated guess " No they are not, they are taking a "wild guess ".

[Tilly2]

It annoys me when they say, 'I'm going to take a punt'.

[Prudie]

None of it annoys me - except Daphne who annoys me beyond measure

[Tilly2]

Yes, she is immeasurably annoying, Prudie. Smug, smarty Daphne.

[brainiac]

Agree re Daphne. I was in a Fifteen-to-One Grand Final with her and she got her first two questions wrong and had to sit down. Ha!

[mikey4444]

Bobbie....it irritates me as well, when people on programs like the Lottery start by saying "Well, geography is not my area of expertise Dale ! "

This is usual in response to simple questions like what is the capital of Spain, or on which continent would you find the Andes, etc, etc.

In reality, if its not celebrity gossip, pop music, or soap operas, any other questions are likely to fall out of the area of their specialist knowledge.

Quite frankly, I don't know where the TV companies get these contestants from....perhaps they respond to adverts in the tabloids asking for thick people only to apply !

[Cloverjo]

I think Jim has mentioned before that quizzes that offer prize money don't want too many intelligent people going on. They'd lose too much money. They need a few like the people we've mentioned. Luckily for the TVs companies there are enough of them who just want to be on telly.

[jim360]

And the other thing is that -- well, sometimes we find the "thickos" just as entertaining, if not more so, than the people who are strong at quizzes. Imagine if, week in, week out, the competitors on the chase got essentially everything right? There'd be no drama. Watching the failures gives us some comfort that, if we were ever on the show, we'd never be so bad.